Hi guys. Is there a rule prohibiting use more than one spell slot per combat round? In the rule of the spell used by the bonus action, there is a prohibition on casting the spell with the main action, but I did not find any more restrictions. In other words, my question is: who and how can cast two fireballs per combat round? The second question is, can the sorcerer use the "Quickened Spell" metamagic to cast two fireballs per combat round?
If you cast a spell as a bonus action you may only cast a cantrip with your regular action. I don't believe there are any features that get around this. Action surge (fighter lvl 2) is sometimes rolled out as a possibility, and there are also people that says no to it letting you cast an additional spell other than a cantrip.
There is the "Spelldriver" feat from the Tal Dorai campaign setting (the setting based on Critical Role) which lets you get around it to some extent. Warcaster is another way to sort of get around the limitation by using your Reaction to cast a spell but has its own limitations on the spells you can cast.
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There is the "Spelldriver" feat from the Tal Dorai campaign setting (the setting based on Critical Role) which lets you get around it to some extent. Warcaster is another way to sort of get around the limitation by using your Reaction to cast a spell but has its own limitations on the spells you can cast.
Spell Driver is NOT 5e, because Critical Role is NOT 5e. Do not even start to bring that into the conversation. The ONLY way (not dealing with Action Surge) to cast 2 spells per turn is to have one as a Bonus Action, one as an Action, with the spell associated with the Action being a Cantrip, and the spell associated with the Bonus Action being any level of spell. That rule is immutable. So only a spell with a casting time of "Bonus Action" can be used in the same turn as a Cantrip. Anything else make a mockery of the game.
edit: I am not talking about Reaction based spells.
There's delayed fireball, Shield Guardian, and I think other spell storing items to allow the use of a leveled spell without your spell slot.
There's also the gimmicky glyphed spell on a coin in your bag of holding, potentially allowing you to activate dozens of spells at once.
I actually tied a Beholders soul into my players Epic Level Warlock allowing him to use a slot as the character, than use the soul that was bound to him to cast another spell slot, functionally having 2 full actions on every turn. It's fundamentally no more powerful than simply having a henchman that could also cast a spell, but less turn economy and unit division. But rules lawyers will act like some law of reality has been broken if you even use some of the creative RAW loopholes.
You could even have a familiar hold a ring of spell storing and cast a spell with concentration simultaneously with its master maintaining another concentration. But adversarial DMs will just pluck your familiar, so put the ring on your tank and have them maintain the spell for you.
One more question. Translated into my language, the rule of a spell with a bonus action sounds like you can't use a spell with a regular action AFTER the bonus spell, but there is no prohibition to use a spell with a regular action BEFORE the bonus spell. That is, if you first cast a spell as the regular action, then there is no prohibition to cast a spell as a bonus action after that. The prohibition rule "can't cast another spell during the same round" according to the laws of logic has not yetcome into effect, because the bonus spell has not yet been, which means there is no prohibition.
I suppose that this is not a completely correct translation into my language, but nevertheless I decided to clarify. I also apologize if I am formulating something incorrectly, I am not a native speaker and partially use Google translator
The order of operation is irrelevant for the rule. If you use your action to cast a spell that isn't a cantrip, you can't use a bonus action to cast another spell. There's no wiggle room in the rule.
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Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Illusionist's Bracers only yet you cast an additional cantrip, not a levelled spell. As such, it wouldn't address OPs question about two spell slots per turn
Hi guys. Is there a rule prohibiting use more than one spell slot per combat round?
Not as such, the restrictions are formulated differently than this.
In the rule of the spell used by the bonus action, there is a prohibition on casting the spell with the main action, but I did not find any more restrictions.
That one is already powerful enough, if you apply it properly.
In other words, my question is: who and how can cast two fireballs per combat round?
See below.
The second question is, can the sorcerer use the "Quickened Spell" metamagic to cast two fireballs per combat round?
No, not that simply, because quickened spell allows you to cast a fireball with your bonus action which means that, during your turn, you are limited to casting a cantrip.
In terms of "per round", you could use a bonus action to cast a fireball, then ready an action to cast fireball on some trigger, meaning that if the trigger occurs during the round before your next turn you can cast fireball. It is not that efficient and on top of that you mush make sure that the trigger happens.
And the last question, if I ready an action to cast fireball on some trigger, at what point is the slot spent: at the time of preparation or during the reaction?
A lot of this has been covered but the ways to use two spell slots per combat round are:
One being a reaction:
For example if you use a spell slot on your turn when it is the enemies turn you can still cast counterspell or shield
If you cast a spell as an action you can caste a reaction spell on your turn (e.g. if you cast fireball and the enemy casts counterspell you can counterspell the counterspell)
If you a spell as a bonus action you can not cast a reaction (levelled) spell on your turn but you can later in the round (for example if you cast misty step and the enemy casts counterspell you can not counterspell the counterspell but you can cast a spell as a reaction on the enemies turn
Multiclass fighter using Action Surge giving you two actions both of which can be used spell slots
These can be combined to use 3 slots in a combat round (or even a single turn). You cast fireball, the enemy casts counterspell and you use a 2nd slot to counterspell the counterspell, you then use action surge to cast a second fireball.
You can also have multiple spells activate on single round by using spell slots in advance using a mechanism that does not require an action to activate. The main way of doing this is glyph of warding. If you are protecting a valuable artifact from being stolen you can place as many glyphs of warding in the room as you like each set to go off a creature enters the room (probably with the exception of yourself and maybe your friends). That way you could set 10 (or more) fireballs to go off at the same time (The 1 hour casting time means you would need a lot of time to prepare this and each glyph costs 200gp)
Contingency is another way to get another spell on your turn. Set the contingency to be when you cast a specific spell - and the contingent spell will go off - not using any action (because it used it in the initial casting).
Nope. Mercer homebrewed Spell Driver. It make a mockery of the rules. Critical Role is not 5e.
Just becuase you repeat yourself doesn’t make you correct.
last time I checked D&D is all about homebrew so to sit there and say “it’s not 5e because it’s homebrew” is literally the opposite of what 5e encourages.
Now if you want to say that the Tal’dorei guide is not officially endorsed content then that would be true. But wizards made a Critical Role official campaign book. So no you are incorrect in your proclamation. Critical role is now recognized as an official campaign setting end of story.
Nope. Mercer homebrewed Spell Driver. It make a mockery of the rules. Critical Role is not 5e.
Just becuase you repeat yourself doesn’t make you correct.
last time I checked D&D is all about homebrew so to sit there and say “it’s not 5e because it’s homebrew” is literally the opposite of what 5e encourages.
Now if you want to say that the Tal’dorei guide is not officially endorsed content then that would be true. But wizards made a Critical Role official campaign book. So no you are incorrect in your proclamation. Critical role is now recognized as an official campaign setting end of story.
Fair enough. The Spell Driver feat is not canon. It has no place in a 5e game. Just because WOTC decided to cash in and publish it under their banner still does not make it 5e. Because we end up with threads like this, where people conflate published homebrew stuff as part of the ruleset, which Spell Driver is clearly not part of.
Critical Role is not the only 5e. It is, however, 5e.
Now, Spell Driver is from the Tal'Dorei Campaign Setting book, which is a third-party unofficial 5e product. Matt's backed off on spell hijinks in his second campaign*, and no feat similar to Spell Driver exists in the Explorer's Guide to Wildemount. That's not to say that Mercer is unwilling to stand by his earlier work (though he has admitted that in retrospect, the TDCG was rushed and sloppy and he wishes he'd done a better job with it), but the Wildemount campaign is as D&D canon as a stream show can really get. Dismissing Critical Role and Matt Mercer's work is no different than dismissing Eberron and Keith Baker's work, or the work of anyone else who's contributed to the canonical body of D&D lore over the years without being a direct Wizards employee.
Also, it makes you a gatekeeping curmudgeon and it's not gonna fly super great on the forums of the company serving as Critical Role's primary sponsor, sooo.....
Anyways. To the original point: there's very few ways of Spell Spamming in 5e. The developers of the game where very careful to cxlose as many of those loopholes as they possibly could, and they regularly squash any new ones that come up via Sage Advice. The design intent for 5e is to upcast the first Fireball, not cast a second. Especially with Fireball, which was deliberately overtuned in this edition because Gamer Nostalgia. There's a damn good reason Fireball upcasts so poorly - it's basically upcast to a 4th-level spell by default already, for free.
___________________________
*For those who don't know:
Critical Role, Campaign 1 was first a D&D 4e game, then a Pathfinder 1e game, and was converted into a D&D 5e game for broadcast on Geeek & Sundry's Twitch. Due to this, there were some rules jank and loopholes in CR C1 that were cleaned up and removed from the second campaign, including the rule that a character could cast a spell of up to second level as a bonus action even if they'd cast a leveled spell as their main action. Primarily this allowed for some truly breathtaking Healing Word spam, but occasionally allowed for things such as Hunter's Mark into Conjure Barrage, or for Spiritual Weapons to come out on the same turn as heals. Mercer explicitly eliminated this rule for the second campaign and tightened up spellcasting, nor does Spell Driver appear to be a valid feat for any of the PCs as nobody has taken it. Keyleth did take one of the TDCG feats in CR C1, the one that allowed her a fourth attunement slot, but despite Laura's chafing at the spellcasting rule, she has not taken Spell Driver.
And the last question, if I ready an action to cast fireball on some trigger, at what point is the slot spent: at the time of preparation or during the reaction?
When you ready a spell, the spell slots are used when you ready the action.
So if you decide to do something else with your reaction, or the trigger never occurs for your readied action before your next turn, then the spell slots are still used, and effectively wasted.
And the last question, if I ready an action to cast fireball on some trigger, at what point is the slot spent: at the time of preparation or during the reaction?
When you ready a spell, the spell slots are used when you ready the action.
So if you decide to do something else with your reaction, or the trigger never occurs for your readied action before your next turn, then the spell slots are still used, and effectively wasted.
It's worth also pointing out that if you Ready a spell - not only do you cast it immediately and hold it until the trigger happens - but the act of holding the spell also requires concentration - even if the spell you're casting normally doesn't require it (like Fireball).
Hi guys. Is there a rule prohibiting use more than one spell slot per combat round?
In the rule of the spell used by the bonus action, there is a prohibition on casting the spell with the main action, but I did not find any more restrictions.
In other words, my question is: who and how can cast two fireballs per combat round?
The second question is, can the sorcerer use the "Quickened Spell" metamagic to cast two fireballs per combat round?
If you cast a spell as a bonus action you may only cast a cantrip with your regular action. I don't believe there are any features that get around this. Action surge (fighter lvl 2) is sometimes rolled out as a possibility, and there are also people that says no to it letting you cast an additional spell other than a cantrip.
For your second question, no. See above.
There is the "Spelldriver" feat from the Tal Dorai campaign setting (the setting based on Critical Role) which lets you get around it to some extent. Warcaster is another way to sort of get around the limitation by using your Reaction to cast a spell but has its own limitations on the spells you can cast.
Spell Driver is NOT 5e, because Critical Role is NOT 5e. Do not even start to bring that into the conversation. The ONLY way (not dealing with Action Surge) to cast 2 spells per turn is to have one as a Bonus Action, one as an Action, with the spell associated with the Action being a Cantrip, and the spell associated with the Bonus Action being any level of spell. That rule is immutable. So only a spell with a casting time of "Bonus Action" can be used in the same turn as a Cantrip. Anything else make a mockery of the game.
edit: I am not talking about Reaction based spells.
There's delayed fireball, Shield Guardian, and I think other spell storing items to allow the use of a leveled spell without your spell slot.
There's also the gimmicky glyphed spell on a coin in your bag of holding, potentially allowing you to activate dozens of spells at once.
I actually tied a Beholders soul into my players Epic Level Warlock allowing him to use a slot as the character, than use the soul that was bound to him to cast another spell slot, functionally having 2 full actions on every turn. It's fundamentally no more powerful than simply having a henchman that could also cast a spell, but less turn economy and unit division. But rules lawyers will act like some law of reality has been broken if you even use some of the creative RAW loopholes.
You could even have a familiar hold a ring of spell storing and cast a spell with concentration simultaneously with its master maintaining another concentration. But adversarial DMs will just pluck your familiar, so put the ring on your tank and have them maintain the spell for you.
One more question.
Translated into my language, the rule of a spell with a bonus action sounds like you can't use a spell with a regular action AFTER the bonus spell, but there is no prohibition to use a spell with a regular action BEFORE the bonus spell. That is, if you first cast a spell as the regular action, then there is no prohibition to cast a spell as a bonus action after that. The prohibition rule "can't cast another spell during the same round" according to the laws of logic has not yetcome into effect, because the bonus spell has not yet been, which means there is no prohibition.
I suppose that this is not a completely correct translation into my language, but nevertheless I decided to clarify.
I also apologize if I am formulating something incorrectly, I am not a native speaker and partially use Google translator
The order of operation is irrelevant for the rule. If you use your action to cast a spell that isn't a cantrip, you can't use a bonus action to cast another spell. There's no wiggle room in the rule.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
https://www.dndbeyond.com/magic-items/illusionists-bracers
Illusionist's Bracers only yet you cast an additional cantrip, not a levelled spell. As such, it wouldn't address OPs question about two spell slots per turn
Find my D&D Beyond articles here
It addresses the immediately prior post, to few responses are addressing spell slots rather than spells.
As an aside, it seems action surge will allow 2 spell slots in a single turn, so a Warrior can action surge to cast 2 spell slots.
And the last question, if I ready an action to cast fireball on some trigger, at what point is the slot spent: at the time of preparation or during the reaction?
A lot of this has been covered but the ways to use two spell slots per combat round are:
These can be combined to use 3 slots in a combat round (or even a single turn). You cast fireball, the enemy casts counterspell and you use a 2nd slot to counterspell the counterspell, you then use action surge to cast a second fireball.
You can also have multiple spells activate on single round by using spell slots in advance using a mechanism that does not require an action to activate. The main way of doing this is glyph of warding. If you are protecting a valuable artifact from being stolen you can place as many glyphs of warding in the room as you like each set to go off a creature enters the room (probably with the exception of yourself and maybe your friends). That way you could set 10 (or more) fireballs to go off at the same time (The 1 hour casting time means you would need a lot of time to prepare this and each glyph costs 200gp)
Contingency is another way to get another spell on your turn. Set the contingency to be when you cast a specific spell - and the contingent spell will go off - not using any action (because it used it in the initial casting).
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Highest 41: brocker2001 (#11,285).
Yahtzee of 2's: Emmber (#36,161).
Lowest 9: JoeltheWalrus (#312), Emmber (#12,505) and Dertinus (#20,953).
Of course Critical Role is 5e. They play 5e, there is even an official Crit Role campaign setting put out by WotC, see:
https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/egtw
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Nope. Mercer homebrewed Spell Driver. It make a mockery of the rules. Critical Role is not 5e.
Just becuase you repeat yourself doesn’t make you correct.
last time I checked D&D is all about homebrew so to sit there and say “it’s not 5e because it’s homebrew” is literally the opposite of what 5e encourages.
Now if you want to say that the Tal’dorei guide is not officially endorsed content then that would be true. But wizards made a Critical Role official campaign book. So no you are incorrect in your proclamation. Critical role is now recognized as an official campaign setting end of story.
Fair enough. The Spell Driver feat is not canon. It has no place in a 5e game. Just because WOTC decided to cash in and publish it under their banner still does not make it 5e. Because we end up with threads like this, where people conflate published homebrew stuff as part of the ruleset, which Spell Driver is clearly not part of.
Critical Role is not the only 5e. It is, however, 5e.
Now, Spell Driver is from the Tal'Dorei Campaign Setting book, which is a third-party unofficial 5e product. Matt's backed off on spell hijinks in his second campaign*, and no feat similar to Spell Driver exists in the Explorer's Guide to Wildemount. That's not to say that Mercer is unwilling to stand by his earlier work (though he has admitted that in retrospect, the TDCG was rushed and sloppy and he wishes he'd done a better job with it), but the Wildemount campaign is as D&D canon as a stream show can really get. Dismissing Critical Role and Matt Mercer's work is no different than dismissing Eberron and Keith Baker's work, or the work of anyone else who's contributed to the canonical body of D&D lore over the years without being a direct Wizards employee.
Also, it makes you a gatekeeping curmudgeon and it's not gonna fly super great on the forums of the company serving as Critical Role's primary sponsor, sooo.....
Anyways. To the original point: there's very few ways of Spell Spamming in 5e. The developers of the game where very careful to cxlose as many of those loopholes as they possibly could, and they regularly squash any new ones that come up via Sage Advice. The design intent for 5e is to upcast the first Fireball, not cast a second. Especially with Fireball, which was deliberately overtuned in this edition because Gamer Nostalgia. There's a damn good reason Fireball upcasts so poorly - it's basically upcast to a 4th-level spell by default already, for free.
___________________________
*For those who don't know:
Critical Role, Campaign 1 was first a D&D 4e game, then a Pathfinder 1e game, and was converted into a D&D 5e game for broadcast on Geeek & Sundry's Twitch. Due to this, there were some rules jank and loopholes in CR C1 that were cleaned up and removed from the second campaign, including the rule that a character could cast a spell of up to second level as a bonus action even if they'd cast a leveled spell as their main action. Primarily this allowed for some truly breathtaking Healing Word spam, but occasionally allowed for things such as Hunter's Mark into Conjure Barrage, or for Spiritual Weapons to come out on the same turn as heals. Mercer explicitly eliminated this rule for the second campaign and tightened up spellcasting, nor does Spell Driver appear to be a valid feat for any of the PCs as nobody has taken it. Keyleth did take one of the TDCG feats in CR C1, the one that allowed her a fourth attunement slot, but despite Laura's chafing at the spellcasting rule, she has not taken Spell Driver.
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When you ready a spell, the spell slots are used when you ready the action.
So if you decide to do something else with your reaction, or the trigger never occurs for your readied action before your next turn, then the spell slots are still used, and effectively wasted.
It's worth also pointing out that if you Ready a spell - not only do you cast it immediately and hold it until the trigger happens - but the act of holding the spell also requires concentration - even if the spell you're casting normally doesn't require it (like Fireball).
Mega Yahtzee Thread:
Highest 41: brocker2001 (#11,285).
Yahtzee of 2's: Emmber (#36,161).
Lowest 9: JoeltheWalrus (#312), Emmber (#12,505) and Dertinus (#20,953).